Child Abuse
It’s heartening to see Australian politicians taking a stand around Catholic clergy abuse, but the calls to action this week by Senator Nick Xenophon and Victorian MP Anne Barker don’t quite go far enough.
We now need a Federal Government led, transparent national inquiry and mandatory reporting of all crimes revealed within the Church environment.
The Cloyne report, an independent state report released in Ireland into Catholic clergy abuse last week is the fourth inquiry in six years. All of the reports have been damning, chronicling the repeated failure of the Church to protect children, bring the guilty to justice and make the welfare of victims paramount.
Continue reading "Child abuse in churches is not yet history" »
Moves are afoot in Ireland to lift the sacred secrecy of confession - so priests will be jailed if they don’t report child sex abuses revealed to them. SA Senator Nick Xenophon has been pushing for similar changes in Australia, arguing that innocent children deserve more protection than religious practice. We asked him for some more details.
What changes would you like to see in the way confessions are handled?
The admission of child abuse to a priest during confession should not be exempted from mandatory reporting requirements. No church should be complicit in the cover up of child abuse just so some paedophile can attempt to clear his conscience. The rule of law should come before religious beliefs, and there should be no exceptions.
Continue reading "Unforgiveable sin: Confessing to child abuse" »
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Lukew says:
Erik, you are spot on. Do people think this will stop Paedophilia? Apart from a complete lack of understanding of confession and why a priest can’t reveal what is said, as if someone would ‘fess up” when he knew he would be reported? Read more »
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Carl Palmer says:
@ Horse says:04:45pm | 22/07/11 & Austin 3:16 says: 05:59pm | 24/07/11 You have a point, catholic priests have been far from perfect. Read more »
We will never eradicate paedophilia or child sex abuse.
This admission is implicit in the naming of SA Police’s Operation Decimate, which is the Sexual Crime Investigation Branch’s child sex exploitation investigation.
I fervently hope they are using the term ‘decimate’ in its bastardised but generally accepted definition – to destroy a significant proportion.
Continue reading "We need a new approach to ‘decimate’ child sex abuse" »
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deb says:
Well said, i can remember being forced to kiss uncle,hug uncle when a child forty odd years ago.Can remember the old buggar copping a feel too.He was a nasty piece of work.My sisters told me of the same thing happening to them to. Read more »
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Jolanda says:
The difficulty is that you cannot control what other people do so what we need to do is ensure that we empower our children to have the confidence to politely say no if they do not feel comfortable with physical contact, even if it is just when greeting a family… Read more »
Abused kids deserve better than spin.
As the Federal Convenor of Parliamentarians Against Child Abuse and Neglect, I applaud the Baillieu Coalition Government for making the welfare of all Victorian children a priority in 2011.
The announcement last week of an inquiry into the systemic problems in Victoria’s child protection system is overdue and welcome. Such an inquiry is much needed not only for all those who work in the child protection system but more importantly, for those who are living with abuse.
Continue reading "Throwing money at child abuse won’t make it go away" »
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Kristy says:
Our system needs a complete overhaul, too many children are being neglected and abused and seriously, it is DISGUSTING!! I was a victim of child abuse and DHS were involved and they did NOTHING! There is not a day that goes by that I do not think about what I… Read more »
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Coopers says:
Referring to the question, “...some 240,607 cases were not ‘substantiated’ and it begs the question, why?”, cases are frequently settled in corridor negotiations. Where it can’t be resolved, the matters are then booked for contests. Unlike civil litigation, the Family Division of the Children’s Court of Victoria is not… Read more »
”…it is highly likely that every Australian either was, is related to, works with or knows someone who experienced childhood in an institution or out of home care environment.’ – Forgotten Australians, p. xv”
At 8.30pm tonight SBS will screen a documentary called The Forgotten Australians, timed to air on the first anniversary of the national Apology last year by then prime minister, Kevin Rudd, to the people who have become known by this term.
Who are the Forgotten Australians – and why was the Prime Minister saying sorry?
Continue reading "One year on, remembering the Forgotten Australians" »
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chris smith says:
jenny bosanquet you demand an apologey from the goverment how about apologizeg to your husband who you abandond when he needed you the most if that what the clan is all about kickin your husband when he is down tryin to recover from surgery you truely are a heartless bitch… Read more »
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Robert Smissen, rural SA, God's own country says:
Acotel, this subject is to serious to try & politicise it. Abuse happened under both sides because nobody was watching. Christian charity isn’t cold unfortunately when churches hire secular workers (& yes, some supposed Christians) abuse happensInstead of looking at the past & using it to belt someone, fix the… Read more »
This week is National Child Protection Week 2010 and this year NAPCAN is highlighting the stark fact that when we know 33,000 children are abused each year, child protection is everyone’s business.
And they are just the ones we know about. These statistics have no place in 21st century Australia.
What would happen if, in a single year, 33,000 Australian children became ill in an epidemic, with some children dying and many children being damaged for life? There would be a national outcry to intervene and stop it. Why isn’t there a similar outcry for children who have been abused or neglected? The abuse and neglect of children continues year after year, yet it seems no one hears these children.
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Chris says:
Karl, “`Reported’ cases have a huge question mark over them as all agencies involved with children are now mandatorily required to report their `suspicions’ of child abuse, which may in many cases have been made for mistaken, mischievous, and malicious reasons.” Are you referring to the false accusations that are… Read more »
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Andrew says:
Sounds like Eric has a few issues. Neglect is one issue and violence and abuse is another. Men are statistically more likely to be perpetrators of violence and abuse that is a fact. That doesn’t mean women don’t commit acts of violence and abuse it means men are the majority… Read more »
Just to be absolutely clear, smashing convicted paedophile and child rapist Dennis Ferguson over the head with a medicine ball is not the ideal way to respond to his presence in a city gymnasium.
That said, Ferguson’s presence in a city gymnasium is not an ideal situation either.
Especially when he just sits there, dressed in a business suit, not even exercising at all, but outside at the pool where he can gaze at dozens of primary school kids who are learning to swim. Especially when he times his visits to coincide with the swimming lessons, either the primary school kids in the mornings, or the high school students when he visits in the afternoon.
Continue reading "Watching the kids swim, with Dennis Ferguson" »
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Pete says:
Dennis ferguson is a pedophile through and through. He has never accepted the fact that he is and never attended any rehabilitation while in prison. Dennis ferguson is a prime candidate for castration and I don’t mean the chemical type, remove the twins permanently & remove the urge. I don’t… Read more »
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Pointing Out Stupidity Since 1994 says:
A little anarchy? Well, there’s an oxymoron. Read more »
SHY Keenan (corr) doesn’t like to call herself a victim nor does she like the term survivor. Both imply a resolution to an issue.
But from the age of four she was systematically raped, beaten, degraded, filmed then, at the age of 10, sold to a gang of dockworkers in the UK for four more years of abuse.
In 2000 more than 25 years after the abuse, she armed herself with a small camera lent by the BBC and filmed one of her attackers boasting about his actions. Two years later she watched in satisfaction from the back of Liverpool Crown Court as three of her attackers, including a stepfather, were handed jail terms.
Continue reading "Abused as a child, with an angry message to Australia" »
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tannie says:
I don’t believe anyone who can harm a child has any RIGHTS. they lose them when the harm the child. Jail may be harsh to some of them but they should never be aloud out of there either. They should stay in there, I think they get off easy what… Read more »
In 1957 a little girl’s life was changed forever.
She was three years old when her family was torn apart, when she was separated from her brothers and sisters and sent to St Catherine’s Orphanage, in Geelong.
For the next thirteen years she lived in constant fear of being punished for every minor indiscretion and with the empty feeling of a childhood deprived of love. She wouldn’t see her brother again for forty years. Hers is one of half a million stories.
Continue reading "For Leonie, for Vera, for everyone who suffered" »
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6c legs says:
Jason, you told us on the 16th that there would be people “that still won’t get it”. In my head I already knew that. But my heart plummets when I read comments like those above, or hear what some Australians thought of our day. Like that’s gunna ‘hurt’ me. What… Read more »
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Paul says:
Are the English going to apologise for dropping several nuclear bombs on Australia and deliberately letting the fallout blow across small towns so they could study the long term effects on human ‘guinea-pigs’ and children? (Google it if you need proof.) Don’t think so. Liberals like Jason would be to… Read more »
- This is the speech given by Labor MP and Punch contributor Richard Marles this afternoon on the Forgotten Australians. The Punch will run some of the MPs’ addresses this week.
Today we have heard just a few of the half a million stories of the Forgotten Australians, each as sad and as powerful as the last. Collectively they represent a well of pain and a great wrong which today our nation acknowledged.
Among those are the stories of the co-founders of Care Leavers Australia Network (CLAN) - Joanna Penglase and Leonie Sheedy. These two were the driving force behind the original Senate inquiry. They have been the driving force behind the National Apology.
Their shoulders have provided support for a multitude of Forgotten Australians. Their ears have heard a thousand stories and in the process provided relief. They are great Australians.
Continue reading "Acknowledging the anguish of those we forgot" »
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6c legs says:
Richard, Thank You! ! ! ! Yup, some bogans still don’t get it. I’m guessing that they’re either the very same people who visited the horrors upon us, or, the sons/daughters of same. . . Read more »
There are many things that trouble me about convicted paedophile Dennis Ferguson.
There is the debate about whether such offenders are ever capable of rehabilitation (I doubt it). There is the debate about whether we are doing enough to address the causal factors that hard wire this evil behaviour, transforming a person into a predator that destroys young people’s lives.
But one issue that seems to have escaped attention is how can a convicted paedophile from Queensland move to NSW and get himself a five year lease in public housing, while almost 40,000 more worthy tenants in NSW are waiting in the queue.
Continue reading "Red carpet for a paedophile while families are homeless" »
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Scott Morrison MP says:
Paul, who do you think has been running planning policy in NSW for the past 14 years. It wasn’t the Libs. Bob Carr said the place was full so just go live somewhere else. I suppose that’s what you’d call vision. Read more »
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Paul says:
Scott, point 4 - you starved the public housing system for years and now on the basis of one case - you claim the system is broke? How many thousands of people does the housing system work for - balance it up!The private rental market is also cactus because the… Read more »
I’m trying to think of an intro that won’t make me sound like a Dirty Harry-style vigilante. But I can’t so I’ll just admit it – if serial paedophile Dennis Ferguson moved into my suburb I’d be out on the street with the rest of the neighbours demanding he be kicked out immediately, and asking why he was ever let out of jail in the first place.
With one exception, which I’ll deal with further down, all the wise-headed counsel against mob hysteria is coming from people who haven’t just discovered that their new next-door neighbour kidnapped and raped three children.
Or that he’s been charged with other aberrant or disturbing conduct since then too. And is still quite obviously as mad as a meat axe, a genuinely scary-looking weirdo who would probably be safer and happier if he were still in custody, rather than popping up in an endless series of new locations across our continent, on every occasion confronted by parents who become frightened and angry when they realise who’s just moved in.
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cats says:
I want to know why he is the only pedophile being targeted by the lynch mob. It’s just because he looks fugly and weird, isn’t it? Everyone knows his face and who he is so theres a very small chance of him reoffending. Most pedophiles are known to the family… Read more »
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YMC says:
Best place for him would be as live-in janitor in a school for the children of the politicians and social activist who support lenient sentencing. If not, house him next door to Robert Hill, the idiot Justice Minister who reckons that tougher sentencing does not deter crime, Read more »
If you took the kids to McDonald’s on the weekend then brace yourself: you may just have landed yourself in hot water with child welfare. While you might claim you were engaging in an entirely innocent and harmless activity that has been going on for decades, you were in fact abusing your kids.
That is if you take the word of UK Daily Mail columnist Amanda Platell who recently labelled parents who feed their overweight kids junk food child abusers. Platell was particularly incensed by the failure of a healthy eating plan sponsored by celebrity chef Jamie Oliver, due, in her opinion, to parents who insisted on feeding their kids junk food at home.
Platell’s branding such behaviour child abuse is part of a growing trend in which the definition of child abuse has been radically expanded to include pretty well any behaviour or point of view to which someone, somewhere objects. Platell isn’t the only one who subscribes to this view.
Continue reading "Abusing the term “child abuse” is dangerous" »
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Adam Blanch says:
Any long term behaviour that has a significant negative impact on the health of a child is fair game for being called child abuse. Poor economic conditions may be risk factors for child obesity, but plenty of poor families don’t create obese children. Though abhorrent and terribly damaging, the more… Read more »
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Al says:
I think the problem here is the use of the term “child abuse” for what really should be termed more as “child cruelty” or “child torture” or “even Violence against children”. By the use of such Inoccuous terminology as “child Abuse” we try and hide from the stark and harsh… Read more »
As the 8000-plus readers of Mia Freedman’s Twitter feed will already know, the clothing company, “Cotton On” has launched a new range of baby suits and T-shirts, bearing the amusing
slogan: “They Shake Me.’’
Trouble is, all the babies in the ads for the “They Shake Me” range are bright and happy and smiling at the camera.
Surely, if Cotton On is going to make light of child abuse, they should use a real-life victim of child abuse to model the clothes?
Continue reading "Cotton On thinks child abuse is funny: meet Lincoln" »
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Amy says:
Basically, if you dont like the shirt, you dont buy one. Simple as that, I dont see how its anymore offensive than South Park or Family Guy Shirts. Read more »
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Roger says:
How is “you shake me” even funny? I don’t understand the humour. What’s next? “I’m a Nazi”? There’s no humour—it’s just tasteless fashion and plain offensive! The slogan tries to derive humour by feeding off negative real-life situations and for me personally, that is unacceptable! Read more »
The shocking case last week of a two-year-old Victorian girl being savagely beaten has once again raised the issue of child abuse into the headlines.
It has started an important debate about when to remove children from their parents and what constitutes a child at risk.
Despite some horrifying high profile cases in recent years, child abuse is a problem that many Australians still think is limited to a certain section of the community.
While this view might make it easier for us to sleep at night, it does nothing to protect the more than 30,000 Australian children who were abused or neglected last year.
Continue reading "Child abuse is still our national shame" »
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Anon says:
Jeremy: There are scientifically proven prevention programs that reduce child abuse. Many of the times they are not available or not implemented correctly. Rick: You’re an idiot. The welfare of the community (including children) is everyone’s responsibility and not just the parents. If the parents are not coping and all… Read more »
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Rick says:
The community is not responsible, the parents are! If you think society is the problem then it is time for society to take action and remove the rights of some people to have children (i.e. Sterilisation) . If you think it can’t be done then stop blaming the government for… Read more »
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